David Petraeus urges Obama to credibly threaten Assad’s air force in Syria

[Eugene]

Source: The Guardian

David Petraeus urges Obama to credibly threaten Assad’s air force in Syria

In a return to the foreign-policy stage, former CIA director tells Senate panel that
US must offer protection to Syrian fighters in order to team up against Isis

Spencer Ackerman in New York
Tuesday 22 September 2015 17.54 BST

David Petraeus, the former commander of the US war in Iraq, urged Barack Obama to credibly threaten Bashar al-Assad’s air force as a way through the bloody morass in Syria on Tuesday.

In a formal return to the Washington foreign-policy stage, Petraeus, the retired army general who led the US occupation of Iraq through its greatest period of tactical success, told a Senate panel that the US would not be able to persuade Syrian fighters to work with it against the Islamic State (Isis) unless it offered them protection against Assad’s air-launched barrel bombs.

“If the barrel bombs continue, then the air force goes down,” Petraeus told the Senate armed services committee on Tuesday.

Petraeus, Obama’s second director of the Central Intelligence Agency, had joined with Hillary Rodham Clinton, the former secretary of state and current Democratic presidential candidate, in advising Obama to aggressively arm Syrian rebels in 2012.

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Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/sep/22/david-petraeus-threaten-assad-force-syria

[randys1]

1. We will never learn our lesson.

[niyad]

2. betrayus, why should anybody listen to anything you have to say?

[dixiegrrrrl]

5. Notice he does not mention the Russian involvement in Syria at all.

Wonder if he still has Presidential ambitions....

[TwilightGardener]

3. Probation Petraeus--does he have a security clearance? I hope not.

Why is he still making sounds from his blowhole? At what point do failure and shame finally make you lose all credibility and drive you out of the public eye?

[niyad]

7. apparently, when it comes to pukes, there is no limit, no depth to which they will not sink, and

no limit to the fools who find them credible.

[leveymg]

4. Petraeus earned his stripes with Bush-Cheney spreading false Iraq WMD info ("bioweapons trailers")

and suppressed key intelligence evidence (they were weather balloon trucks) that contradicted the buildup to war. See, http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/09/11/383458/-PETRAEUS-IRAQ-WMD-DECEPTION-How-the-General-Earned-His-Stripes-With-Bush-Cheney

Added a gold star as CIA Director for the fatally flawed 2011 serial regime change operations he carried out with Hillary at State that spread Jihadis and heavy weapons from Libya to Syria. The guy is a total fraud and fuck-up. No wonder the GOP Congresscritters love him.

[David__77]

6. I just realized what, in part, motivates my thinking about Syria.

First of all: I don't pretend to know what's really going on in Syria.

In the past on the board, I said lots of pro-Syrian government things. Sometimes I did so reflexively, to get a counterpoint out there.

I think that especially because I'm gay, I think of things like "how would event XYZ affect gay people?" When I think of Syria, I think of Damascus and the more Alawite areas like Tartous and Latakia as being a much more (relatively) free environment for gay people than insurgent-held Idlib, let alone ISIS country. When I see pictures of people in government areas I notice the hairstyles and Western fashion and makeup on women, and I take this as code for what I consider safe. When I see pictures of people in insurgent areas (including ISIS areas), I notice covered women and long beards, and I apparently take this as code for what I don't consider safe...